Methodist Protestant Church
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The Methodist Protestant Church (MPC) is a national Church body which was officially formed in 1828 by former members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, retaining Wesleyan in doctrine and worship, but adopting congregational governance.
A majority of the Methodist Protestants were reunited with their fellow Methodists in 1939, and for that reason, the historic Methodist Protestant Church is regarded as one of the predecessors of the present-day United Methodist Church.
The Mississippi MPC delegation to the 1939 Uniting Conference withdrew from the proceedings, and the Conference was reorganized to continue as the Methodist Protestant Church in name, doctrine and practice. As of 2006, the MPC consists of 42 churches in the United States, located in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and a mission conference in the country of Belize. It also sponsors a mission church in Korea in partnership with the International Council of Christian Churches.
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[edit] History
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[edit] A Methodist reform movement begins
The particular issue which would eventually give rise to the organization of the Methodist Protestant Church was one of Church governance rather than doctrine. Dissatisfaction among some Methodists with regard to the increasingly exclusive power of clergy, particularly bishops, and the exclusion of laymen from the councils of the Church, including the Annual (regional) and General (national) Conferences.
In 1818 Methodist Episcopal minister William M. Stillwell organized a class of fellow believers who were concerned about the increasing power of the bishops and the lack of lay representation in the church structure. William S. Stockton, a Methodist laymen, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania arose as a leader of the reform movement. In 1821 he began publishing the Wesleyan Repository, a periodical promoting what he termed "the mutual rights of the ministry and laity." Three years later, in 1824, publication was suspended in favor of a new periodical with a broader distribution, and the cumbersome title, "The Mutual Rights of Ministers and Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church," published in Baltimore, Maryland.
Petitions seeking a more representative form of Church governance was delivered to the 1824 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which rejected it. By the time the next General Conference was convened in 1828, the movement had grown in size and organization, largely through the work of local "Union Societies" which had formed throughout the country to promote the cause and present a united front, hence their name. The delegates deliberated a full three whole weeks in committee on the subject before the Conference ultimately rejected the reforms again.
Not only had the initiatives of the reformers been met with no official approval by the authorities of the Church, but Church members involved in the movement were increasingly being threated with expulsion unless they would disavowed and agreed not to distribute Mutual Rights and cease participation in the Union Societies.
[edit] Establishment
In response to actual and threatened expulsions, a convention was held in Baltimore, November 12, 1828, an initial organization was formed with the provisional name of "The Associated Methodist Churches," temporary Articles of Association adopted, and its first General Conference scheduled for 1830. The intervening time was used to form local churches and organized into annual (regional) conferences. Fourteen Annual Conferences were represented by one hundred and fourteen delegates at the first General Conference, called to order on November 2, 1830. The delegates adopted the permanent name "Methodist Protestant Church" to denote its connection to the reform movement, adopted a Constitution and Discipline reflecting the representative form the reformers had sought within the Methodist Episcopal Church. Unlike the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Protestant Church rejected the use of bishops. In the MEC, the bishops had the power to appoint pastors to appointments. The Methodist Protestant Church appointed pastors by a president of the conference. The conference then affirmed the appointment.
[edit] Methodist reunification
After the formation of the Methodist Protestant Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church had become further fractured by the corresponding division of the nation during the American Civil War. At the conclusion of that military conflict, there corresponding division between Northern and Southern Methodist Episcopal Churches remained. While discussion toward reunification went forward slowly, many of the democratic reforms of church governance were adopted which had led to a separate Methodist Protestant Church. Consequently, the reunification process was broadened to include all three major "streams" of American Methodism, and resulted in a Uniting Convention being convened in 1939 with representatives of the General and Annual Conferences of the three separate bodies as delegates.
Some of the original differences between Methodist Protestant Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church remained unresolved. Addditionally, many Methodist Protestants objected to what they perceived as a liberalization on the part of the Methodist Episcopal Church with respect to the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, the deity of Christ and Wesley's teachings on the work of the Holy Spirit. This opinion was the minority view in most Methodist Episcopal Annual Conferences, the Mississippi Conference being the sole exception. The Uniting Convention proceeded to effect the merger, which formed The Methodist Church, which in 1968 merged with the Evangelical United Brethren to form the United Methodist Church.
Rev. F. L. Sharp, Mississippi Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church to the Uniting Convention, had walked out when it became obvious that the merger was inevitable. He returned home to lead his Conference to continue as an Annual Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, which he was also instrumental in reorganizing separate from The Methodist Church with local churches and conferences in several other Southern states.
[edit] References
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